Musicality And Everyday Life

I don't know a single person that doesn't listen to music in some form, whether it's the iPod in your pocket, on the radio or going to clubs. But music has benefits other than providing a backtrack to your daily life.

I'm a musician. I live for my music and I've noticed over the last few months that a sense of musicality helps you in an everyday capacity. You learn rhythm, timing, pitch... You even learn to listen.

Let's start with the basics. If you play an instrument you learn rhythm. This is an invaluable skill when you learn to dance, but is also handy in things like modelling, where you want even, smooth steps. You also learn to predict things more accurately. "1, 2, 3!" If counted at regular intervals, everyone knows when 3 is going to land because the gap between 1 and 2 is the same as 2 and 3.

Timing. The first example I can think of is knowing how long it'll take for a traffic light to change. It's an internal sense of how long things take to happen. It prevents you from jumping the gun, running a red light that changes moments later. It even helps comedians to pause for the exact length of time for comedic effect.

Pitch. If you can play an instrument you can tell when something changes pitch. Did you know that a flat tyre makes a lower sound than a properly inflated tyre? A glass or mug with a chip also produces a different sound.

And this brings me to my last point. You learn to listen. When you study music, they often let you listen to a song and pick out specific instruments or sounds. This skill is handy in all kinds of ways. I've been able to work out what's wrong with my car simply from the sounds it makes. Speaking of cars, I've saved myself from getting run over twice because I heard a car approaching behind me, even through the noise of other cars.

When I was younger, watching TV, I would often turn off the sound and listen for the sounds my mom were making in the house, then guess what she was doing. It was a fun game, but it taught me of the little sounds everyday objects make.

Computers also make sounds. When I sit in bed with my laptop, I sometimes position it in a way that cuts off the airflow into the machine, but withing a few seconds I would notice the hum kick in of the internal fan trying to keep the thing cool, and I know it's suffocating. You can hear the hard drive in a computer churning when it's copying things. When you think the machine has frozen you tend to panic and start pressing buttons. "But wait, the hard drive is still churning. Maybe it's just busy." And invariably it wakes back up when it's done with whatever it was doing.

Besides being a backtrack to your life, music is a skillset. I use my musicality on a daily basis and I'm very thankful to my parents for affording me every opportunity available to develop it.





Words:
"Seriously, we should give up on the idea of anything mainstream because pop culture has splintered into a thousand things and will never be put back together."
-Robert Ashley, guest on Gamers with Jobs Conference Call Ep 126

Docs...

When I say I'm heavy on my shoes, I mean it. I get up in the morning, shower, dress, put on my shoes, and that's where they stay till I get into bed at night. The shoes I wear must go where I go, do what I do. If I want to walk 20 km up Buitengracht street, they take me there. If I want to break into a sprint across a wet field my shoes have to get me to the other side. If I want to stand my ground in a mosh pit I need something to keep me rooted to the floor.

I buy one pair of shoes and wear them until they fall apart. I don't want to waste time deciding which shoes to wear today. Foot goes in, tug on laces, maybe a knot, and off I go into the urban jungle.

On average my shoes last two or three months before they give up. It needs to be strong, comfortable and especially affordable. They will break. I will need to replace them. I can't afford the most expensive shoes every time. I've also figured out that shoes with ankle support is a better idea for me, so that's a requirement aswell.

I tried Converse All Star Hi-tops for a while. Though they are comfortable shoes they don't last very long and get dirty unbelievably quickly. Caterpillar shoes are strong but just don't fit the shape of my feet (slim at the heal, wide at the toes. Fighter's feet, I'm told...) Then one day I decided to try a pair of Doc Martens.

I bought the 8-up laced design. It had the ankle support I needed without being too complicated to lace up every time. I was told to buy them tight. Because it's made of leather they will stretch to fit my feet. The first two days I wore them around the house in the evenings but couldn't bring myself to give up the biker boots I was practically living in at the time.

After two weeks the leather had settled. These were officially the most comfortable shoes I had ever owned. As my foot slipped in it felt like one hand grasping the other. It was like a hug from a loved one, it fit that good. These shoes did literally everything I needed them to. The soles were flexible without being soft. They were a soft walk but I could still feel the road under my feet. The shoes are narrow enough to fit between the car's peddles (manual gearbox thank you) but wide enough to keep my balance when sprinting through crowds on a busy street.

These shoes are cool when it's hot. They keep my feet warm when it's cold. There's no pair of shoes I would rather wear.

I sit typing this with, you guessed it, those same docs on my feet. I forget exactly when I bought them but I'm sure it's been over a year now. The leather looks a bit tarnished but nothing a coat of leather food won't fix. The soles are still solidly part of the shoe thanks to this bright yellow stitching. There's a few indications of the underside thinning but nothing to cause worry.

I understand why these shoes have become such a staple of durability. It's obvious why they've become so famous in 50 years. Very few products are so famous that they make the brand. Moleskine. Converse. Ford. Boeing. Dr Martens.

"The boots and shoes have been especially popular among skinheads, punks, grungers and members of a few other youth subcultures."

-Wikipedia

So why are these shoes so popular in the frowned-upon part of society? I have no idea. We were at a gig last night(pirate party, Strident played) and I can distinctly remember twenty (yes 20) people wearing classic black docs in varying heights. And if you ask any of them, they will never buy another pair of shoes. If those broke, they'd replace them with the same.

It's inexplicable. Docs have become a part of the culture. It's an item of recognition. "So where did you buy your docs?" is a perfectly valid pickup line.

I think the answer is relatively simple: It's a really good, inexpensive, easy to care for pair of shoes. They are so simple, there's nothing that can go wrong with them.

As with any niche-market product, it has become increasingly difficult to find docs in South Africa. I fear the day these finally give out on me. Maybe I should try going barefoot for a while...

Words:
"There is no shortage of guys picking up guitars and trying to get chicks."
-Gamers with Jobs Conference Call Ep 121

Guitar Hero III Through The Eyes of a Guitarist

Being a guitarist of about 8 years experience, I always scoffed at the prospect of games such as Guitar Hero or Rock Band. I considered it gimmicky, air guitar with a high score even. But a few weeks ago when I was offered an opportunity to play my curiosity got the better of me, so I took hold of the plastic replica Les Paul and selected a difficulty. I chose medium but very quickly moved to hard, because I figured it can't be far enough removed from the basic mechanics of playing as to render me useless. What transpired was a nail-biting and elating few hours that ended in my purchase of the game. I now venture to compare the game with the real thing and how neither is like the other, but the one contributes towards the mastery of the other.

Firstly, I was right in my assumption that the game is like the real thing. You press a chord,and strum the note. You also have a tremolo arm(referred to by its fashionable name of whammy). It feels surprisingly like playing a guitar, although the lack of weight makes it a little tricky to keep stable. To play the songs a certain degree of timing is needed, especially on the more difficult songs where offbeat notes and different time signatures come into play, such as the intro of La Grange.

There are also elements that remove the game from the real thing. The fact that 6 strings and 22 or more frets with an infinite combination is reduced to 5 buttons with no open note(when no note is fretted). The strumming is also turned into more of a button being hammered than the actual motion of strumming. There is also no such things as palm-mutes, an integral part of most rock songs. But my main complaint is that the buttons give no feedback. You need to press them relatively firmly and the only thing telling you where your hand is on the 'fretboard' is a little mark on the middle button. On a real guitar, you can feel a definite edge where your fingertips move over the fret's edge. You know what the strings are doing under your fingers. But this is all a result of taking a fundamentally analogous action and turning it into computer inputs.

Now the bright side. I've come to the conclusion that Guitar Hero, besides being a very fun and addictive game, is also a very good stepping stone to learn to play the guitar.

When you endeavour to learn the art of guitar playing, there's a typical development curve: For the first few weeks you feel like you'll never get it right and it's a waste of time. Then when you get the hang of it, you progress very quickly and you can literally feel and hear yourself improve as you play. Guitar Hero helps to overcome the initial stupidity of learning the guitar. You're going through the motions of your first few guitar lessons, but you don't have to listen to the dull twank sound of your efforts. You're rewarded by a throbbing crowd of cartoon moshers. It's then relatively simple to shift over to a real guitar and 'fill in the gaps'.

I had to think twice about writing the next bit, because it could potentially insult many of my guitar playing friends: Guitar Hero can get you over The Wall. After a few years most guitarists hit a wall where just playing guitar isn't enough anymore and you need to start thinking about the technique and theory behind your playing to progress. Many guitarists are happy to stay by this wall, and turn into the sing-along players at the bonfire on the beach. The guitarists that commit to conquer the wall will end up the riffing superstar that you see in Guitar Hero. This is where techniques such as hammer-ons, pull-offs, sweeps, arpeggio and chord structures become important. The hard and expert levels in Guitar Hero do a very good job of helping you onto this path. The main benefit the game provides is the timing between your hands. I struggled for many a lonely evening to get my right hand to pick at the same speed as my fretting hand presses the notes. The game makes it all part of the progression. When you turn away from the game and pick up a real guitar, you can feel that your hand-to-hand coordination has improved.

The game has it's gimmicky elements, such as the battles where you can break a string on your opponent's guitar, or get their bridge stuck requiring them to furiously manoeuvre the whammy bar. There are also elements in the game that seasoned guitarists will appreciate, such as your star power indicated by a row of valves lighting up as you play and the not-so-subtle placing of name brands such as Line 6 and Mackie.

All in all it's a very fun game that can be enjoyed by anyone with a relative ear for music. I expected the game to hurt my guitar playing by getting me used to buttons instead of strings, but it turns out the game actually helps your playing. Now the only thing I need to get over is the dent on my ego when my friends see me standing with a small plastic Gibson X-plorer(pictured right) draped from my shoulders...

Words:
"We both know that the promise of simulated rock stardom will always bewitch the pasty nabbish fantasies that are gaming's core demographic."
-Zero Punctuation

Metal Is Not Evil

A story surfaced this morning of a kid going to his school and stabbing people with a sword. Links:
Mail & Guardian
News24

There are 2 things I want to protest in this:

1. "The boy had painted his face black and wore a black balaclava, resembling the drummer of the band Slipknot, said Krugersdorp councillor Alex Raubenheimer"

   Here's a picture of Joey Jordison wearing his signature mask. Now I don't want to be funny, but how does this resemble a black balaclava?

2. "He came here camouflaged as the guys from Slipknot. We know the wrong kind of music, and drugs have bad effects. Young people need to be informed of the effects of bad Satanic music," said Eksteen.

This is where my rant really starts...

How can people assume that because a guy listens to metal he's going to go around killing people? Slipknot isn't in any way connected to satanic material. There are bands that are, such as Black Symphony, but as far as I know Slipknot never made a point of being satanic.

Here's me, a 23-year-old guy. I've been listening to metal much heavier and scarier than Slipknot for essentially as long as I can remember. And I had trouble hitting people when I started doing kickboxing.

Dear Mr Eksteen, whoever you are, I can say that your school encourages satanism or somehow indoctrinates children to do drugs and kill other people. Why? Because I have no idea what's going on at your school, the same way you have no idea what goes on in metal because you simply don't care enough to get rid of your stupid idealistic prejudices and listen to a few songs. If you don't know what you're talking about please shut the fuck up.

I'm sick of people judging us for the music we enjoy. Metal makes you kill people exactly as much as RnB makes you fuck every living thing and Rap makes you pop a cap in a gangsta's ass. Get over yourself.

My question to you is: Isn't this simply another form of racial profiling?

PS, the only reason I'm posting this if because I couldn't find the talk-back feature on either of these stupid websites.

Discrimination

Has anyone else noticed the fact that "discrimination" is of the root word "crime"?

Let's begin:

In the aftermath of a recent school shooting in Germany, the regional governments of Bavaria and Lower Saxony have proposed new legislation that could punish those who make, distribute, or even play video games featuring "cruel violence on humans or human-looking characters" with a fine and up to a year in prison. The newly drafted bill is scheduled to go before the upper house of parliament next year.

I don't mind the bill. It's a good idea. Kids see far too much violence in the modern world. But this is where I disagree:

The 18-year old shooter, who according to an online report from MSNBC was an avid player of the popular first-person shooter Counter Strike, attacked the Scholl secondary school on November 20 in the western German town of Emsdetten, and wounded as many as 37 people before killing himself.

It's as if they went "Aha! He plays Counter-Strike! He must be a bad seed..."

Let's look at Counter-Strike. It's a team-based, round-based game where a group of terrorist group needs to protect hostages or plant a bomb (depending if they're playing offensive or defensive) and the counter-terrorist team has to rescue hostages or prevent the bomb from being planted or worst case scenario defuse the bomb. If any team is eradicated the other team wins by default. So, except for the fact that it's a computer game and you have real guns... It's simply paintball. The characters in the game don't die in any realistic manner, they never cry for mercy nothing. How can you blame such a lame game with graphics from the late 1990's and gameplay similar to a classic teenager pastime for a guy buying a gun and massacring in school?

The same thing used to happen with suicide and metal music in the late 1980's during the new wave of American Metal. In many cases that the government and Tipper Gore were unaware of metal actually saved lives because children (teenagers) realised that they weren't going through those things alone.

You really start to think "Where do they come up with this stuff?"

Slayer is an "openly satanic band and a detriment to society", according to a musicologist I shall not name. Slayer's lead vocalist is a devote catholic.

My point: People are very quick to judge you by what you do as recreation and stop listening when they find what they are looking for, not when they find the truth.

I fully understand that you cannot get to know a person fully, few people know themselves that well, before making up your mind about them, but try not to use your personal judgement and damaged history to decide why someone else did something.

OK, I'll stop now.